Chapter Seven - The Rule of Law, Inshallah

Summary

The president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, has called the rule of law the glue that binds state and society together. But this glue erodes easily. As the previous chapters have shown, practices and institutions associated with the rule of law are as broken, inconsistent, and discordant as the Horn of Africa’s many Islamic states and their colonial, authoritarian, and democratic architects have been. Throughout the Horn of Africa’s history, political elites – colonial administrators, democratically elected officials, authoritarian rulers, aqils, sultans, sheikhs, international lawyers, and foreign aid workers – have sought to resolve people’s disputes, write constitutions, draft laws, construct law schools, build prisons, and reform courts.